Yusen Logistics driving Kaizen culture of excellence across Europe

Yusen Logistics Europe is driving operational excellence by holding a yearly Kaizen competition aimed at empowering colleagues to take the lead in enhancing its operational services.

The annual competition, which is open to all teams and sites from across Yusen’s Europe region, has proven successful in fostering a culture of continuous improvement in line with the Japanese Kaizen philosophy. This growing engagement with Kaizen culture has resulted in the launch of hundreds of new improvement practices and initiatives over the last five years, enhancing service quality across the region.

The competition grants two awards; one for Kaizen culture, and one for the best Kaizen improvement project. The Kaizen Culture Award goes to the site with the biggest percentage of colleagues to drive and deliver a Kaizen initiative.

This year, the company saw a rise in the number of Kaizen initiatives delivered across almost all of its Europe locations. Stealing the show however, Yusen Logistics Poland won the award for Kaizen Culture with over a fifth of colleagues delivering a Kaizen project, while Yusen Logistics Benelux won the award for best improvement project.

The winning Kaizen improvement project was led by Benelux’s Herentals Cross-dock team and was centred on providing increased KPI information to warehouse operatives. This enabled operatives to identify more opportunities to improve service quality on a daily basis, further engendering the culture of Kaizen.